


Wide open

by Milesine



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, post-movie (2013), uprising spoilers free
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 19:06:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14118930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milesine/pseuds/Milesine
Summary: How were they supposed to live, now that they had a future?





	Wide open

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this piece several months ago (and even before, years ago, as this is a rewriting of an even older story) but I was too self-conscious about it to post it then. Now, thanks to Uprising and the new rise of this lovely ship, I feel like it's a good time to release it. 
> 
> The events take place after the first movie, so this work is entirely spoiler free. For these of you who have seen Uprising, this may not be the kind of 'fix-it' works that we so deeply need right now, but a little bit of hurt/comfort never hurts, right?

It had been one sleepless night too many.

The minutes of this late hour were too thick in his throat to be simply swallowed and forgotten. Bloodshot and wide open, his eyes were burning from staring at the ceiling for so long but he couldn’t look away from it. It wanted all of his attention – it was a black hole, endless and excruciatingly empty. He ran sweaty fingers through his dishevelled hair. The sight of it was driving him sick.

He knew the sun wasn’t going to rise any time soon; he couldn’t wait for it in the cruel silence. Not again. When he kicked his tightly tangled sheets away and stumbled out in the hallway, Newton already knew what he was heading for.

He was only wearing a loose tee-shirt and a pair of boxer briefs. The cool air of the Shatterdome was merciless, relentlessly biting the skin of his exposed arms and legs, but he barely acknowledged it. The hard floor under his bare feet went unnoticed as well.

The dull echoes of his footsteps ceased when he found the room he was looking for. He wiped his wet palms against the fabric of his tee-shirt and took in the view of the heavy door in front of him. What time was it? It was late, that much Newton could tell. So, two a.m.? Five a.m.? Who knew. Hermann would be asleep either way. Hermann would be _annoyed_ either way.

He inhaled deeply and raised his right hand clenched into a tight fist to knock against the fortified door, loudly enough to be heard. When the door opened warily after a long minute or so, Newton was nervously drumming his fingers against his own naked thigh.

“Newton?”

Hermann’s voice was a coarse whisper. His silhouette was blurry, but Newton could tell that he was wearing white striped pajamas, strictly buttoned up to his neck. As expected from the man.

“Do you know what time it is? I was sleeping.”

“Lucky you.”

Newton shrugged nonchalantly and a damp shiver ran down his spine: his tee-shirt, moist with sweat, was uncomfortably stuck to his back. He found himself missing the tight embrace of his sheets for a second. As suffocating as they were, they did their job and kept him warm. The cold concrete of the Shatterdome wasn’t helping either.

“I hope that you didn’t wake me up for the sheer sake of it, Geiszler.”

Newton stared back at Hermann. He was leaning against the fortified door to support himself and he looked tired – his glare was not as sharp as it usually was.

“I miss the Kaiju.” 

“Could you please refrain from…” Hermann’s tongue clicked dryly in his mouth. “Come in, now.”

He stepped to the side with a disapproving scowl and ushered Newton in.

“People could hear you! What’s your damage?”

Gottlieb firmly closed the door as soon as Newton was inside. His voice was now loud and furious.

“We’ve been working together for ten years, Hermann. You should know the answer.”

Newton walked towards his colleague’s desk, turning his back on him.

“Why did you come here?”

“I needed company.”

“And?”

“And you are the only company I have here.”

That was not a lie. Tendo was friendly enough, of course. They even had their own secret handshake and they had taken to greet each other every morning with it – a long practice that exasperated Hermann when Newton and he were on their way to the K-lab. But the two men were not that close.

His relationship with Hermann, on the other hand, was different. Shouting at one another was their trademark. It got so violent at times that the Marshall himself had had to step in to send them back to their respective sides of the laboratory. They could have named it rivalry, and left it at that.

Yet that would have been a narrow definition. They looked after each other only to pretend they would never do such a thing. Hermann reminded Newton to rest when he had been up for more than thirty hours; Newton lent his arm to Hermann for support when his cane alone wasn’t enough. Hermann only drank tea and Newton coffee, yet they would always prepare both. Mere rivals don’t do this.

Mere rivals are not drift compatible either.

The biologist blindly ran his fingers along the sheets of paper lined up on the desk. He could feel the creases left on them by the hasty pressure of Hermann’s ink pen and his throat tightened. These piles, as well, were fit for the bin.

“What do you want, Newton?” The mathematician sounded as exhausted as he looked.

“Why did you keep your equations?”

Hermann stared at Newton’s back for a moment. Eventually, he let out a sigh of resignation and walked back towards his bed. There, he leaned down to switch on his bedside lamp and a soft yellow light filled the room. 

“I don’t know,” He cautiously sat on the edge of his bed to relieve his bad leg from all the weight it had been carrying without the aid of his cane. “I must have forgotten to throw them away.” 

Newton hummed absent-mindedly before turning away from the desk to lean back against the wall. There were too many posters and pictures in his own room to do such a thing, but Hermann’s room was ascetic. He had the bare minimum, and his stock of chalks hidden somewhere. He had never trusted Newton with them, at least not enough to keep them in their laboratory. The biologist had learnt that fact the day he intended to pull a prank involving said chalks on his colleague but found himself unable to carry it out. It was a bitter-sweet memory, now. Newton cleared his throat.  

“How are we going to survive?” He sounded weak; pathetic.

“This is a question that you supposedly ask during the apocalypse, Newton. Not after it’s been cancelled.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

They had been given ten years to accept that each new day might be their last. They had had no choice but to adjust. Hermann tilted his head back and sighed.

“I lied.”

Newton cocked an eyebrow. The silence conveyed his question.

“I was not sleeping.”

And now they were asked to unlearn the past ten years of their lives. The war clock was no longer ticking. The Kaiju had been blown away; the Jaegers destroyed; the Breach closed; the Apocalypse cancelled. Equations and dissection were no longer a priority. Never again would they be.

“But the world is safe, Newton. This is what we wanted. This is why we stayed in the resistance.”

“I know.” Newton ran two shameful hands against his face, his breath hot against the tender skin of his palms. “I was happy. I thought it would last.”

Hermann silently acquiesced with a nod. Two weeks ago, Raleigh and Mako had made it home hand in hand, holding the future of the world in the curve of their triumphant smiles. The loud celebrations lasted for days, but the euphoria of their victory steadily wore off. Soldiers and technicians eventually packed and left, one after the other. Some of them had a family waiting for them; the others were ready to build their life again from scratch. All activity ceased and the hallways of the Shatterdome became too quiet. A week later, when Newton had turned in for the night, he had found himself unable to fall asleep.

How were they supposed to live, now that they had a future?

“We are alive. We have to move on.”

“It’ll be easier for you. The world always needs mathematicians and physicists and you are both,” Newton pointed out. “Has the NASA tried to hire you yet?”

“Yes.”

Newton scoffed.

“See? I told you. You will be needed. You are _already_ needed,” He emphasized. “But nobody needs a Kaiju specialist.”

“They will want you to archive your researches and conclusions.”

Newton’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“Archives? You have to be kidding me.” Newton shook his head and repeated, “Archives. Do I look like someone who gives a fuck about archives?”

“You don’t even look like a scientist.”

Newton rolled his eyes at Hermann’s wry smile.

“Hilarious, Gottlieb, hilarious.”

The biologist slumped further against the wall, then crossed his arms and sighed.

“Realistically, I know that I will be needed as well. But it will be different. Maybe too different.”

He was a genius, that was a fact. He was the second youngest student to enter MIT and he had six doctorates because one had never been enough to satisfy his need for constant challenge and stimulation. He would receive job offers – he had already, but he had deemed them too bland to even consider them.

He had spent a good third of his life buried elbow-deep in extra-terrestrial monsters’ viscera that reeked of ammonia and acidic blood, running on ten to twelve cups of coffee a day and three hours of sleep when he was lucky. After this, everything was doomed to be bland.

“They gave me a reason to live.”

“I know.” 

Newton was right: it would be easier for Hermann, because Hermann had never been emotionally invested with the Breach.

“You need time, Newton. The world as it’s going to be from now on… You will get used to it. You will adapt and you will… you will find another reason to live.” But Hermann’s voice betrayed the lack of confidence he had in his own words.

Everybody knew what the Kaiju meant to Newton: he didn’t love them, but they fascinated him. Predictably, most people failed to see the thin difference between these two concepts. Newton had been beaten up more than once for the vibrant ink that he wore so proudly on his arms but the warm blood running down his nose had never stopped him. He kept his sleeves rolled up.

The biologist gave his colleague a tired, doubtful look.

“You will get used to it. You have to,” Hermann insisted.

Newton pressed the heel of his palm against his stiff eyelids to ease the tension creeping around his eyes.

“I have to,” He repeated distractedly and Hermann tore his gaze away from him. He was smoothing the folds on his sheets when Newton spoke again.

“Can I sleep with you?”

“What are you, Newton? A twelve-year-old?”

Geiszler smiled at the familiar sarcasm in his colleague’s voice. His smile widened into a grin when Hermann lightly patted the mattress to invite him to sit by his side.

“Am I too charming for you to say no?”

Newton climbed on the bed and Hermann grabbed the switch of his bedside lamp to turn off the light.

“Be careful, Geiszler. I can kick you out anytime.”

The man laughed and leaned backward, his hands pushing against the sheets to prop himself up. He could scoot back to rest against the wall again but that would have meant moving away from Hermann. Bending his back and tilting his head to look at him was a much better alternative.

“I was asked by journalists and universities to hold conferences. What about you?”

“They contacted me as well. I have yet to reply to them.”

“Me too.”

“Isn’t it what you wanted? Being a rock star?”

“Yeah, no.”

Newton laughed sincerely and the room brightened up with him.

“This shit is boring, dude. Absolutely not fun. Being a rock star has to be _inherently_ fun.”

“I am not so fond of conferences myself,” Hermann agreed with a thin smile.

Newton had certainly not chosen the field of biology to become a lecturer. He loved gloves, scalpels and fresh organs as much as Hermann loved private space and the soothing scraping of chalk against his blackboards.

“And I bet your ass that our actual researches will be thrown under the bus. I can already see it, Hermann,” Newton drew an abstract circle with his hands in front of them both. “A huge crowd of reporters. And the only word on their tongue is _drift_.”

“If that’s so, you will get twice as many questions as I will.”

The darkness swallowed the smirk on Hermann’s lips but the sound of his voice alone was enough for Newton to picture it clearly, mocking and slightly haughty.

“I will never tell them that you drifted with me because you were scared for my life,” Newton teased. “Nobody will know that the distinguished Dr. Hermann Gottlieb has feelings.”

Hermann’s irritated _tsk_ fooled no one. He opened his mouth to add something but Newton interrupted him by abruptly sitting up straight.

“You know what? We should hold these fucking conferences together.”

“Why not. I guess it would be more interesting with you.”

Newton was too excited by the prospect of being a lecturer alongside Hermann to pick up on the hint of hope his colleague had tried to conceal with indifference.

“Especially if we argue. They will give us mics. Just, just imagine that, Hermann. Their eardrums are so not ready for our screaming matches.”

He raised his hands and brought his fists close to his own ears. When he suddenly opened them, stretching his fingers as much as possible, he produced a sound close to that of an explosion. 

“Newton,” Hermann pinched the bridge of his nose. “Conferences are _not_ battlefields.”

“Okay, okay. No screaming matches, then.”

The indistinct shape of the desk in front of them caught Newton’s attention once again. He remembered the sheets of paper blackened by lines and lines of hurriedly written numbers and his mind wandered from Hermann’s calculations to their laboratory. He would miss everything there was about it, the silly tape line more than the rest.

If he was honest with himself, he already did. 

“So, are we really going to stay in touch?”

“Unless you would prefer not to.”

Hermann’s voice was oddly solemn. Newton shook his head.

“Dude, I would miss your grumpiness too much.”

“No hard feelings Geiszler, but I wouldn’t miss your endless rambles. They are pretty detrimental to my mental health,” Hermann added with a teasing smile.

Newton rolled his eyes at this.

“Shut up, Hermann. I know you want me back the minute I leave the room.”

“In your dreams, perhaps.”

Newton could have said that none of his dreams were about him but that would have been a lie. The words that eventually rolled off his tongue were a question. It seeped like acid from his lips; it made him feel vulnerable, but it had to be asked.

“Do you hate me?”

Hermann went still, his fingers flatly stretched against his thighs as he looked up at Newton with confusion.

“Why would I hate you?”

“Because the Kaiju killed thousands of people and I miss them.”

Newton’s nails were deeply dug into the flesh of his own upper arms, the sleeves of his tee-shirt too short to cover more than his shoulders.

“No,” Hermann eventually replied. “Anyone else would hate you for saying such a thing, but I don’t. I know what you mean. I understand.”

“You do?”

Hermann’s lips curved into a knowing smirk. How could he not, after ten years of partnership and a drift? 

“As much as it pains me to admit it, I know you like the back of my hand.”

Newton stuck his tongue out but the light in his eyes was tender.

“Thank you for letting me in, tonight. And for… for not hating me.”

“It was a close call,” Gottlieb smiled, his voice soft with affection. “But you’re welcome.”

“Hermann?”

“Yes?”

The biologist frowned with determination. Hermann was intently staring at him; the room was pitch dark, but Newton could tell that their eyes were locked. Whether it was a side effect of the drift or because they had always been more connected than they were ready to admit it, Newton had yet to decide.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Newton, I–”

The biologist leaned forward and Hermann came to a short stop. The reply that he was about to give dissolved on his tongue when Newton gently brushed the back of his left hand with his fingertips.

“Hermann, can I?”

His voice was nothing but a gentle breath. Newton laced their fingers together and Hermann consented with a hesitant yet anticipating nod. Of the many things they had shared in the long years of their partnership, not even once had there been a kiss.

Newton’s stubble was rough against the smooth skin of the mathematician’s jaw but their lips met tenderly. When Hermann tilted his head to the side to deepen the kiss, Newton moaned softly against his mouth. They were exhausted; it would have to remain relatively chaste.

They drifted away from one another to inhale; they found themselves staring at each other’s lips with amazement. Newton let out a tired yet blissful laugh.

“We should sleep, now.”

Hermann agreed with a hum, absent-mindedly running his thumb along the plump curve of his colleague’s cheek. A wave of warmth washed off the tension his body had been holding in for so long and Newton sighed with relief. He leaned in to quickly press his lips against the corner of Hermann’s mouth once more.

“Thank you,” He said again.

Hermann’s bed was quite narrow, but they both found their way under the sheets. When Newton rolled over to wrap an arm around Hermann’s waist, a flat palm weakly pushed him away. The biologist whined his displeasure.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“You know the rules, Newton. Your side, my side.”

“The…”

Newton laughed loudly against his colleague’s shoulder. He snuggled up against Hermann once again, pressing his forehead against the soft fabric of his pajamas.

“And you know that I don’t give a single fuck about your rules.”

This time, the mathematician showed no intention to shove him away. Newton rubbed the tip of his nose against Hermann’s angular jaw with contentment. That got him an unconvincing protest from the man.

“Your feet are cold.”

“You will get used to it. You have to,” Newton replied with a giggle. 

The mathematician groaned at the echo of his own sentences.

“Time to sleep, Geiszler,” He scowled dryly.

And if Hermann ever shifted closer as discreetly as he could to rest his chin against messy hair that wasn’t his later that night, Newton knew better than to point it out aloud.

The world as they knew it had been blown away with the Kaiju and the universe they inhabited. The resistance was slowly being dismantled, piece by piece, man by man, and they as well would have to leave the Shatterdome soon. They were about to bury the last third of their life in a coffin made of cold metal and rough concrete and there would be no funerals. This was how it had to be: you do not grieve the end of the apocalypse. But Hermann was right. They would be able to adjust. They did it once when the first Kaiju broke through the Breach; they could do it again.

Newton had decided to keep his set of scalpels and Hermann had been granted the right to take his blackboards. These were the only remnants of their life as the two last members of the research division that they would keep; that, and each other. Hermann would be the bridge between the past and the future that Newton needed. And if Hermann ever wanted it, he would be his as well.

Newton closed his eyes – it was easier, now that there was a body next to his and a peaceful heartbeat against his ear. The sun would rise and go down again but Hermann would be here. He could think of a future for them both; there would be a new world and there would be a together.

It was four in the morning when Newton finally fell asleep. 


End file.
